FELLOWSHIP LIVESTREAM: Psychedelics, Mysticism, and Religion with Madison Margolin

Psychedelics might be where God, science, and policy meet. Scientists at the forefront of the psychedelic renaissance have defined the so-called “mystical experience,” according to several qualifying criteria, such as a sense of oneness or transcendence of time and space. What they’re finding is a correlation between the magnitude of a patient’s healing—when they undergo psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy for conditions like end-of-life anxiety among cancer patients—and the magnitude to which they have a mystical experience. It’s through this encounter with mysticism that scientists are seeing progress in their research, and ultimately, this mystical aspect to psychedelic healing will be part of the mechanism by which psychedelic policy and legality shift in the coming years.

But it’s more than that: Psychedelics are forcing scientists to grapple with what indigenous stewards of plant medicine have known since the beginning of humankind—that there’s a vital, synergistic interplay among spiritual, mental, and physical wellness. What’s more is that the feeling of connection to community, the cosmos, the natural world, and other loved ones that psychedelics engender shows a critical relationship between individual and collective healing. Psychedelics, like spirituality and religion in its purest truest form, have the potential to connect us back to our integral essence. Having grown up “HinJew” in the Maharajji satsang—where Ram Dass was a close family friend to my father Bruce, a criminal defense lawyer who campaigned to legalize cannabis—I’m endlessly fascinated by how psychedelics can inform our sense of spirituality and connection to (or deviation from) religion. As a journalist, I’ve explored this question in particular regard to the Jewish world, seeing how entheogens like acid or ayahuasca, are helping people reconcile their religious identities, heal intergenerational trauma, and even reconnect to Biblical traditions and ancient shamanic rituals involving entheogenic plants. From Judaism to Hinduism, and everything in between, religion can offer a framework through which to understand and foster expanded states of consciousness and ultimate healing.

Madison Margolin is a journalist covering psychedelics, cannabis, spirituality, and Jewish life. She is the co-founder of psychedelic magazine DoubleBlind and has written for publications like Rolling Stone, Playboy, and Vice, among others. Also a co-founder of the Jewish Psychedelic Summit and host of the Set & Setting podcast on the Be Here Now Network, Madison has traveled from cannabis farms in Northern California to underground ceremonies in Brooklyn to the shores of the Ganges River and all over Israel-Palestine, reporting on the role of entheogens in religion, culture, and healing. Find out more about her work here, or follow her on social media: Twitter, Instagram, Facebook.